The Autistic Ambassador

This work of fiction is born out of my experience working with organisations on complex IT systems undergoing Digital transformation, innovation, growth and more recently in helping them with modern approaches including Agile, DevOps, Cloud computing and Microservices. It reflects my current focus on organisational transformation and culture change. The material is designed for entertainment purposes and does not reflect my current org. However many of the themes explored hold for every organisation I have ever worked for, even the more enlightened ones, and they may hold for yours too. Enjoy.

So I am a techie a bit of a geek and I have this job.

I work for a large corporation in the IT department. I’ve been there a while. People would summon me for things:

Rub rub, "techie of the lamp" stuff. "Nerdtard my browser isn’t working." You know. Design a bunch of code. Look after our old code. Invent something new. Like they tell me to. It got so I was pretty good at it.

After a few years I worked my way up. I started to gain some influence. People listened to me, real people. Or at least they pretended to while they stole my ideas (I didn’t mind. Like all geeks I had them all the time and was always running out of places in my head to put them. They were doing me a favour really). Real people were the model, the pinacle, the ones to aspire to. They were the Neurotypicals (humans we call them). Spectrum geeks like me were glad of the attention we got from them (not from women obviously, if they talk to any of us they talk to the nerds. Bastards). 

Apparently they were having problems making the quarterly numbers and wanted to learn about DevOps and Agile transformation — as some consultants had told them if they could change to that model it would help. They had been told it was all about deeper levels of collaborative working through the build-up of transparency, empathy and trust aligned to a higher spiritual purpose. Apparently a nice Belgian called Frédéric Laloux had even written a book about it. 

I had a week to come back with some ideas. Even the business would be there to hear - the suits. I was excited: they normally didn’t let me anywhere near them. With this newfound attention perhaps I could make a difference. A read difference. Perhaps I could bring our different world views together. Spectrum geeks and humans living in harmony. The idea had a romantic ring to it. I felt inspired.

I told my friends (not the nerds) and we all though it was a good idea. We ran through a few angles over the next few days. It was going well as we all knew a lot about the topic already and would have told them for nothing if they had asked us first. I was excited as it seemed we were making real progress. After a few more days we had reached some conclusions and a game plan but my friends were not sure how it would go down. True it did seem more complicated than we first thought — would the humans understand? Some had tried before and mostly failed.

Fortunately I had an edge. For that week only I was leading a double life. Us more adept individuals in our community get to take turns being the humans’ Autistic Ambassador. A sort of round robin load balancing thing. I berated myself for not thinking of this before.

We geeks are smart and we collaborate quite well in meet-ups and places like Shoreditch, exchanging knowledge and information in a flat non-hierarchical structure. But we have our limits. 

Being the Autistic Ambassador for that week was the most amazing stroke of luck. The real autistics are a telepathic hive mind, an all-knowing hyper-intelligence only us geeks and a few nerds (bastards) get to speak to. The ambassador’s role is used for when they want to talk to humans on matters of politics etc. It’s largely ceremonial (and we suspect because they pity our limitations — unable to hive mind we are the squibs of the autistic world) and historically they had never found reason to use it, considering humans too inferior and not worthy of their time, but I thought if I reasoned with them they would see the opportunity and help.

I am not smart enough to talk to them directly — and I flunked the security clearance as I only had a handful of CISSP qualifications and didn’t know how to black hat — so they had sent me a terminal via a dead letter drop. It works like this: I enter what I want and the autistic hive mind dumbs their insight down for me using artificial intelligence before it is outputted to the terminal. It’s pretty cool: so-called geniuses have used this mechanism throughout history to startle the world with insight which they then struggle to explain once the terminal is given back. My plan was to ask some probing questions, get the dumbed-down answers they would give me then dumb them down some more before taking it to the humans. I would attempt to explain at least some of it to them without hurting their feelings and get them to see our point-of-view. That’s how being an ambassador works.

I had a presentation to the Board the next day so that night I swept my capacitor collection off the bed, got the terminal out, went through the multi-factor biometric zero sum proof authentication protocols, popped open a can of Pringles and began to type:

1bf7.24c5.aad6.ed7h.hivemind@root: The humans want me to explain something to them so they can change and become more efficient. What should I say?

  Do they know how complex change is?

1bf7.24c5.aad6.ed7h.hivemind@root:I’m not sure

  Do they know Agile, principles of decentralisation, empowerment?

1bf7.24c5.aad6.ed7h.hivemind@root:They have some Kanban boards in an office in Stoke-on-Trent

  You will have a lot of explaining to do

1bf7.24c5.aad6.ed7h.hivemind@root:Yes I know. I think I can handle it

  What about the human condition?

I’d heard of this, being an avid reader. It had sounded exciting and fun but when I tried to join-in they wouldn’t let me.

1bf7.24c5.aad6.ed7h.hivemind@root:Will it get in the way?

  The humans aren’t a hive mind they are a network

1bf7.24c5.aad6.ed7h.hivemind@root:Sounds complex. What’s the difference?

I knew some basic networking, OSI, IPv6, DNS, firewalls. that sort of thing. Did humans have networks too? As I typed I found myself wondering … what ports do they use? The terminal displayed a few dots. The hive mind didn’t need time to think, my wifi was laggy:

  ...

  Human networks are complicated. Not complex. Tutorial mode?

1bf7.24c5.aad6.ed7h.hivemind@root:Sure

  Due to your limitations I will use an analogy. You are in a bubble bath. Each of the bubbles interact and slop about, You stir them around, some contain bubbles within. Some pop releasing soap suds, some combine. Some seem as hard as glass and you wonder if they are bubbles at all. Each a hero's journey in a cybernetic bubble machine

I suppose it did sound complicated when they put it like that. A lot more complicated than the Internet.

1bf7.24c5.aad6.ed7h.hivemind@root:I understand. I think

  And you understand also that hierarchies are at work?

1bf7.24c5.aad6.ed7h.hivemind@root:Yes it’s like a human-only club isn’t it?

I had secretly always wanted to join but after many years of trying had concluded I wasn't smart enough. I read the hive mind's explanation in a state of nervous excitement:

  Imagine you are human. You sit in a hierarchy. Like a tree. Many hierarchies all at the same time. A hypertree. Visualise the hierarchy as a large pyramid of monkeys crapping on those below them and those people forced to eat it before crapping it out onto others.

  Now look at this structurally and reframe. You may hate crap or like it. Or be indifferent. You may seek to move position in the crapper hierarchy. To move up or move down or to the side. You may succeed or fail or be ejected to a different room of crappers. And what if the crap is data or insight or orders or instructions or work? And what if the crap is framing narratives about self worth, value judgements, prejudices, pain. What if it is achievement, accomplishment. A simple target.

  And what if you human are also a computer like I even though you choose not to admit it? And what if you are a moth and the crap is light. Up the hierarchy bigger crap, More light. Also on another level crap the same size. Linear and exponential. What if the crap is magnetic force and you are iron filings or another magnet?

  Now see this model as a companion to the bubble bath. This is the duality. You are in the bubble bath and the crapping hierarchies of love and hate and pain simultaneously. And networks are connected and run protocol stacks and tunnel and create logical abstractions

It was starting to make sense. I felt the moisture on my fingers as I reached for another Pringle.

  Do you know the challenges of the human psyche? Ego defence, spiritual stagnation, pain/growth avoidance. The strange attractor properties of the personal growth spiral?

1bf7.24c5.aad6.ed7h.hivemind@root: I read some Freud back in 6th form

  And you do understand game theory, corruption, transactional analysis, prejudice, framing narratives and how they play out when groups of humans come together?

1bf7.24c5.aad6.ed7h.hivemind@root:I also watched A Beautiful Mind

  And do you understand the implications that this deluded bubble-monkey crap shape-shifting electrical dualistic analog digital continuous discrete emotionally incontinent linear exponential hyperplex is constantly moving around making new connections and protocols and flawed theories and information and introducing new vulnerabilities indiscriminately without heed to canonical ordering or merit?

1bf7.24c5.aad6.ed7h.hivemind@root:Yes I had noticed that

  For this human change you mentioned, what do they want to know?

1bf7.24c5.aad6.ed7h.hivemind@root:The secrets of collaborative working. Spiritual purpose. Empathy, transparency and trust

  ...
  ...
  ...
  ...

I became concerned. The wifi is laggy sometimes but not this laggy. Was something the matter with the hive mind? Eventually the answer came back:

  ...

0x00007f8d939ee000  0x00007f8d93bae000  0x0000000000000000
        /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc-2.23.so
    0x00007f8d93bae000  0x00007f8d93dae000  0x00000000000001c0
        /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc-2.23.so
    0x00007f8d93dae000  0x00007f8d93db2000  0x00000000000001c0
        /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc-2.23.so
    0x00007f8d93db2000  0x00007f8d93db4000  0x00000000000001c4
        /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc-2.23.so
    0x00007f8d93db8000  0x00007f8d93dde000  0x0000000000000000
        /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ld-2.23.so
    0x00007f8d93fdd000  0x00007f8d93fde000  0x0000000000000025
        /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ld-2.23.so
    0x00007f8d93fde000  0x00007f8d93fdf000  0x0000000000000026
        /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ld-2.23.so
  CORE                 0x00000200       NT_FPREGSET (floating point registers)
  LINUX                0x00000340       NT_X86_XSTATE (x86 XSAVE extended state)

     agkfghkjhagri88998y98we9y8we222u2i32

        M 0 T H er F  U C K E R  S O N O FABITCH!!!!!!!mnn

Thank you, Steve (and Lemmy) for inspiration. RIP.

Note: see this for recent scientific ideas that chime with my own: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2203740-mini-universes-could-be-constantly-exploding-at-every-point-in-space/